The fast and the curious at the V8s

As a survey of the proposed Auckland street race tots up the dollars, GREG ANSLEY experiences its Australian equivalent


In the Lexmark Indy boardroom in Southport, on Queensland's Gold Coast, the talk is of power, money and sex: lots of it, with howling engines, pulsating crowds and lots and lots of women in bikinis.

"This will always be a sexy event and we can never take that away from it," says marketing manager Greg Price. Communications manager Brett Murray, a giant of a man known universally as Crusher, adds: "The Gold Coast is about sun, it's about girls in bikinis, it's about blokes in boardshorts and surfboards ... this is where people come to have fun."

Come late October, more than 300,000 people will pour on to the coast for just that as the Indy 300 comes to town, throbbing with the roar of 800 horsepower Champ Cars and Gillette V8 Supercars, and one of the biggest annual parties in Australia.

Inside its 4.47km circuit, most of the 5000 people who live in the towering highrises will have long battened down the hatches. Those who cannot stand the noise and the crowds will have packed their bags and fled town, renting their units for up to A$5000 ($5500) for the week. Most, according to surveys, will stay.

A small army of contractors is already preparing to seal off the northern end of the coast, from Main Beach to Surfers Paradise, and construct a race track through its streets with more than 2500 four-tonne concrete blocks, 16km of security fencing and 10km of heavy-duty debris fencing.

All this will be built within 96 days, beginning next month. When the Indy first came to the Gold Coast in 1991 it took 200 days. Boasts operations manager David Bennett: "Our construction programme is now the blueprint for any race on city streets, anywhere."

Auckland should take notice - and officials have already been to the Gold Coast to study construction and traffic management plans for the four-day event ahead of the city's own proposed, but still controversial, Indy meet. Much of the Queensland experience will cross the Tasman if the Auckland race goes ahead.

This is an event of big bucks and big images. The money invested is phenomenal, from the organisation and promotion on the Gold Coast to the racing teams.

Australian motor racing icon Dick Johnston runs two cars in the V8 series, one driven by his son Steve. Each car costs up to A$350,000 ($388,000) , which Johnston says is a "best estimate" that excludes more than 1000 hours of skilled labour.

An engine costs A$130,000 ($144,000) , and at any one time his team has 12 on hand. A set of shock absorbers is worth A$16,000 ($17,800).

The cars are transported in a vast double-deck double trailer, with a conference and dressing room and a machine shop and sufficient parts to build a new car. The rig is worth about A$2 million ($2.2 million).

The dollars that flow from it are even greater. This week a study by Market Economics concluded an Auckland race would generate a net $36.7 million for the regional economy. An analysis by the Queensland State Government concluded that last year's Indy pumped more than A$50 million ($55.5 million) into the economy, boosting tourism by almost 160,000 visitor nights, creating the equivalent of about 500 jobs and handing the state international promotion worth A$15.5 million ($17.2 million).

A festival has been built around the racing, with carnivals, parties and special events to haul a wider market into motorhead orbit. It did not come easy.

The boot-shaped circuit effectively seals off a large and buzzing chunk of the Gold Coast, which even without the Indy has problems with traffic. It shatters the relative peace of the parkland of MacIntosh Island, enfolded by the Nerang River, with pits, parties and the main straight where cars scream by at 300 km/h.

At first, complaints poured in, and funding was a nail-biting wait each year. Politically, it was a nightmare.

"In the early days residents weren't fully considered," says long-time ticketing manager Julie Curran. "Now we make sure they are."

In 1996 the State Government, persuaded by the economics, fell in behind the event, becoming a partner with events manager IMG in race organiser Gold Coast Motor Events. "Growth since then has been phenomenal," Curran says.

Organisers also put a huge effort into bringing onside the residents whose homes effectively became part of the event, especially the large numbers of retirees living within the race precinct.

Building managers are asked to identify residents who might need help and, two weeks out from the race, volunteers explain changes to one-way systems and other traffic arrangements. Those who do not want to deal with the changes are picked up and taken for shopping trips and social outings.

It seems to be working. Complaints have dwindled to a tiny handful. This month the Gold Coast Bulletin surveyed residents on their attitudes to the future of the Indy, and 97 per cent said they wanted the race to continue.

Motorheads and partygoers certainly do. "This event is an important part of people's lives," Crusher says. "They keep coming back year after year after year."

Last year a record 306,184 attended, and Curran says ticket sales are now running ahead of those at the same time last year.

On average, this will be the third Indy for most spectators. Most will be young, male and single, although statistics show a large percentage will also be married or living with a partner, and of those who come from outside Queensland, almost half will stay on for an extended holiday.

One in three will be female, a statistic the organisers use to broaden their demographics and which they want to target - along with corporations - in their promotion.

"We are trying to attract that audience as much as we are the male, which is the predominant audience," Price says. There are two rotating TV advertisements this year, one male and one female. Both are pretty steamy, using the "feel the heat" slogan, with other promotional videos featuring sequential flashes of cars, boobs and bums.

"The male ad is designed to appeal to the male, white collar, corporate audience," Price says. "The female and the sex that that brings to it is designed to attract not only the female, but the male audience as well."

Personification of this is Larissa Wilson, the 19-year-old blond Bartercard Miss Indy, whose tanned body in chequered-flag bikinis and lycra swimsuits appears on posters, calendars and beer mats.

But this is business for Wilson, a professional model who campaigned for six months before the contest for a title that could catapult her into the big time.

Jennifer Hawkins, the runner-up to the previous Miss Indy, is this year's Miss Universe. Wilson hopes her title will help push her into TV presenting, or help set up her own business. And, she says, it is all the better because she loves car racing:

"Definitely, especially the V8s. I'm a typical Queensland girl - of course I'm going to follow it."

But there is a touchiness among Indy organisers about the focus on sex and nubile bodies. This year they are trying to make the event more family-friendly, setting up a new family area with children's entertainment and toning down the raunchiness of the notorious Shooters Bar "a peg or two".

"There are the scantily clad women, which are your Indy girls if you want to put it that way, the V8 Supercar girls," Curran says. "We encourage the meter maid girls, so long as they're not handing out fliers and that sort of stuff. But we ban G-strings.

"And this is a big track. You're not confronted by scantily clad women right throughout the track. There's a concentration around MacIntosh Island and the pit area, and that's obviously what the TV picks up on."

Adds Crusher: "Even if they are scantily dressed, it's their decision to dress like that. If they want to dress in a bikini on the beach and come over to the track, that's great. If it's a hot enough day, then that's terrific."

* Greg Ansley flew to the Gold Coast courtesy of Lexmark Indy 300 and the Gold Coast Tourism Bureau.